


Drop Me in the Water

by tyndaridai



Category: Korean Drama, 상속자들 | The Heirs
Genre: F/M, Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyndaridai/pseuds/tyndaridai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I told you to wear the goggles."</p><p>(Day 1 of the 12 Days of YoungRa)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drop Me in the Water

**Author's Note:**

> You may notice that this was meant to be the second part of Take Me to the River. I decided not to continue on with that, but I did want to do something swimming related; this is a small shoutout to those that were waiting for it. This is also set sometime in the future and Rachel and Young Do have become closer as friends. Please check [this masterpost](http://tyndaridaes.tumblr.com/post/105382274895/masterpost) for more information about the small ficathon.

Young Do is off to the side, the muscles of his shoulders bunched where he has thrown his arms over the lip of the pool edge, boneless and powerful looking with his hair slick back and Seoul’s nightscape glittering behind him through the window. 

She doesn’t need to see him to know where he is, an annoyance with his sheer physicality and disdainful slouching. The water ripples when he shifts against the pool wall.  
  
“I told you to wear the goggles.”  
  
Rachel turns from her place near the ladder, palm pressed tightly against her right eye as she tries to glare at him through the chlorine. “And I told  _you:_ over my dead body.”  
  
Young Do chuckles, eyes sliding shut and head dropping back as he soaks in some imaginary sunlight. “If this is because I laughed at you that last time…” Rachel narrows her eyes, bristling at the memory of his involuntary burst of laughter when she’d finished her lap seconds behind him and peeled that too small pair of goggles from her skull.  She didn’t give very many people the opportunity to laugh at her, and lately Young Do seemed to take express pleasure in it.   
  
Worse was that she found herself caring less and less when he did. (About other things, more personal things, the thought that he could laugh at her left her stomach hollow and her throat closed. When he had come to mean this much to her, she didn’t know).  
  
“Oh Young Do,” she sighs, saccharine and sharp, “you know I put little value into anything that comes out of that mouth.” She blinks the majority of the water off of her lashes and smoothes her hair back from her face. She was a bit breathless after this run, the feel of blood rushing through her was a good one, her muscles sore but strong from slicing through the water. This new tradition of hers, laps with Young Do, had become a vital part of her week. Not only did she feel stronger, but  these sessions left her so physically exhausted that she collapsed into a dreamless sleep the second her head hit the pillow every night.  
  
Of course, putting up with Young Do’s gleeful gloating every time they raced was also extraordinarily taxing. He was twice her height and had the wingspan of some mutant bird. Rachel had gotten stronger and she was certainly faster in some respects, but the second Young Do’s lithe, powerful body hit that water, there was little competition. Not that it would ever stop Rachel from trying; Rachel could hold her breath far longer than Young Do could. As always, it was just a matter of time.   
  
Rachel adjusts her suit and looks up to find that Young Do is watching her. She blinks, the question on her lips, but Young Do merely smiles, unperturbed at being caught. “Oppa is just looking out for you,” he shrugs insolently.  “It must be hard to swim after me.”

She shoots him a look, wrapping a hand around the pool ladder and cocking her head to the side. “If there’s any difficulty swimming behind you it’s because you splash around like a goldfish.”  
  
“I’d prefer shark.”  
  
“They aren’t fish,” she corrects,“though you certainly look like one.”  
  
He gives a sly, predatory smile and Rachel can’t hide the small laugh. “Thank you.”  
  
A companionable silence fills the room and Rachel watches as Young Do’s eyes slide shut again, his lean deepening against the pool edge. He was still breathing fairly heavily, drawing Rachel’s eyes to that impressive chest. She watches shamelessly, if not with resignation as her eyes trace the familiar route along the corded muscles of his neck, the dip and slope of his expansive shoulders and the fine lines of his hands.  
  
Four months ago Rachel had been content to hide her growing attraction behind stern glares and dismissive quips. For a time, she felt that she could no longer trust herself (she wondered if she ever truly had). One of the many things Rachel had learned from the nonsense with Tan was the volatility of her own thoughts and emotions. She’d felt closer to broken glass than iron and stone. Or she had. A year of reconsidering her priorities and desires had settled something once erratic, something Rachel had once tried to control with coldness and a penchant for cruelty.   
  
Which was why she was so resistant to these new feelings. And for Young Do, no less.   
  
In the past few weeks; however, something had become very clear to her. In spite of her reservations, her willful dismissal of any possibility of a future with him and her conviction that he could never feel the same way, she liked him. And if she discarded her own self conscious delusions, she was fairly certain that he may feel the same way too.  
  
So what did that make them?  _Fools,_  she thinks. It made them fools.   
  
The sound of her name snaps her back to the present and she gives a startled look to Young Do, whose eyes are a steady weight on her own. He arches a brow, arms now dropped into the water and floating by his sides as he watches her. “Ya,” he says, dark eyes searching, a wary set to his jaw. “I know I’m handsome, but don’t faint. You might drown.”  
  
She knows it’s meant to be a joke (a poor one), but Rachel doesn’t smile. She watches him, essentially the best friend she has, and hears her heart in her ears.  
  
"Rachel," this time he flicks a bit of water her way, brows low over his eyes. As he settles in against the pool ladder, Rachel thinks back to the past few weeks, his comments, his consideration, his stares. There was a vulnerability in Young Do that Rachel recognized in herself, a vulnerability both had been desperate to hide and were only now accepting and transforming.   
  
With slow, deliberate movements, Rachel reaches for him. Her fingers trace the tips of his under the water, running along the bone and sinew to his palm, bubbles forming where she touches. She doesn’t look at him when she takes his hand, continuing her exploration of his skin until their palms slide together and she wraps her small fingers around his wrist.   
  
She hears him let out a low, long breath and she swallows hard.  
  
"Young Do," she says, finally able to look at him. He’s staring at her with hooded eyes, water dripping from his hair and along the slope of his nose. He swallows reflexively and she gets distracted by the thought of her lips pressed to the hollow of his throat.   
  
He folds his own fingers around her wrist and tightens his hold on her hand.   
  
Clenching her jaw, Rachel makes her decision.   
  
One hand still clutching the pool ladder for balance, Rachel winds her fingers through Young Do’s wet hair and seals her lips over his. He freezes, and for the brief moment that his face slackens and his mouth parts, Rachel can taste him.  
  
He pulls away from her almost immediately.  
  
“What was that,” he says lowly, words stilted like he’s hanging on to them even as they leave his mouth. She hides a small tremor with a too tight smile and feels hollow the longer he pins her to the ladder with just his stare.   
  
“A kiss,” she gambles, and refuses to move her hand from his hair until she is sure.  With only spandex and water between them, she has never felt so foolish nor vulnerable in her entire life. He doesn’t move, only assesses her with an indecipherable look, eyes rapidly searching hers.   
  
She has bluffed, gambled, and lost.   
  
“You seem shocked,” she rallies, folding the broken pieces of herself into a smirk. “Perhaps you’re not as experienced as I th—” she gasps when Young Do surges forward, crowding her against the pool wall.   
  
“Don’t play stupid Rachel, you’re better than that,” he breathes against her cheek. “Is that what this was?” he’s smiling now, cruel and heated,eyes wide and a little wounded. Rachel marvels at how quickly his moods can change and his temper flare. “I thought you were over Tan. Playing fast and loose with me isn’t going to prove anything to—”  
  
She kisses him again, hard. She uses her hold on the pool ladder as leverage when she brings him flush against her, their kiss more a vicious press of teeth and anger as she tries to exorcise the pain that accompanies his flippant words. Oh course he had misunderstood. Rachel wondered how long Young Do would believe that his life was always somehow tethered to Tan’s.  Tan. Why was it always about  _Tan_?  
  
“Stop it,” he growls against her mouth, teeth clenched and grip bruising where he’s steadied himself at her hip. He’s confused, she can hear it in his voice.  
  
“Sometimes,” she snaps, hushed but adamant. “Sometimes it’s just about me,” he stills and Rachel takes another breath. “Not Tan, Young Do. Just me and,” she falters, blinks, and takes her second gamble, “you.”

For a long, painful moment, there is nothing except the sound of their laboured breathing. He’s staring at her like she’s a problem to solve, not just a girl who has made a mess of a confession in her tasteful Stella McCartney one-piece, hair dripping wet.  
  
He moves, but only to lean back away from her and Rachel feels everything in her shudder to a close. She let’s her head hit the side of the pool ladder and gives a tremulous smile.   
  
“Forget it,” she holds back the bite of angry tears at her throat. “Pretend I was kidding. Move,” she shoves at his chest, needing to be out of the pool and out of his sight to better lick her wounds and chastise her stupidity. “I said, move.”

Young Do does neither.   
  
He wraps his hand around the grip she has on the ladder and hangs his head so that he is a breath away from her lips. “Why do you always have to do things the hard way,” he mumbles and she glares at him suspiciously, never sure that she can trust his mercurial temperament. “I get it now,” he continues at an amused hush. “You only wanted to swim so you could see me in my swim suit.”  
  
The scoff comes out involuntarily, like a habit, and Young Do grins back at her, a real, genuine smile.  
  
“What are you doing,” she exhales tiredly, exhausted by this game that she never wins, no matter how well she plays, or how expertly she bends the rules. At the ladder, his hand tightens around hers.   
  
“I’m going to kiss you now,” he makes a clicking sound with his tongue when she narrows her eyes in disbelief. “So you can stop being so dramatic.”   
  
“Dramatic,” she bites out, and inclines her head in mutiny as he presses closer, water sloshing around them. “I’ve changed my mind. Those…” she flounders for a moment.   
  
“Kisses,” he supplies helpfully, smug.   
  
Her eyes flash and she exhales slowly through her nose. “I do hate you. I hope that sentiment is very clear.”  
  
He whistles, his look of consideration over done and comical as his brows arch high on his forehead. “I think so, I’d be an idiot to miss the meaning behind those looks. Or the words coming out of that mouth,” she snaps her mouth shut and he chuckles. She remains still as he leans in closer, free hand finally reaching over her shoulder to properly brace himself. He is a parenthesis around her, his other hand still holding hers tightly against the ladder. “But apparently,” his voice grows deeper and Rachel bites into her cheek when his eyes skim the swell of her mouth. “I missed some things.”

She isn’t sure what this is, what he actually thinks, or what she actually wants. But she does, want him, that is. The possibility that he could want her too is more than enough.

“Study diligently,” she says finally and answers the challenge in his eyes with an arched brow of her own.

His lips are softer when he finally presses them against hers, so unlike the first two she’d planted on him. There is urgency there when he parts her lips with his tongue, but it is slow, languid, and consuming.   
  
She let’s go of her grip on the pool wall and winds her hand in his hair as she takes his bottom lip in her mouth.  He uses the opportunity to bring her closer to his chest, his arm acting as a buffer when they push up against the ladder and wall.  
  
"Rachel," he murmurs, tucking kisses at the corner of her mouth, then her jaw and her throat and she wonders if she tastes as chemical as he does. Unfortunate, but she supposes there will be another opportunity (without the chlorine)  to discover such things about him. She smiles privately at the thought and tightens her hold on him.   
  
"Young Do," she tries to interrupt, eyes sliding shut when he makes his way back to her lips. "Maybe we should—"she inhales sharply and her voice shakes, "should wait."  
  
"Wait?" he parrots, a deep rumble against her ear.   
  
"Until we’re back in our clothes," she stresses meaningfully, aware of the tight press of their wet bodies together. She flushes when he raises a brow at her, all that skin on tantalizing display. There is a surge of possessive instinct, a desire to scrape her nails along his trapezius and mark him now that she can. It’s why she needs to slow this down. His pupils are blown wide and his mouth is a hairbreadth from her own. If she doesn’t stop this, she will take him right there on the pool ladder and she cares too much about this, them,  _him_ , to rush into things.  
  
Young Do brings his hands up to cradle her cheeks, thumb brushing the flushed skin gently. His hold on her doesn’t loosen, but he draws back from her, giving them both the space that they need.  
  
"Another lap?" he says, voice gruffer than usual, but his infuriatingly playful smile stays the same. She smiles back and feels a swell of affection for how well Young Do understands her, how willing he is to follow her lead.   
  
"Well," she says, bracing her feet against one of the ladder rungs, fingers tightening on the railing, "you are a glutton for punishment." She presses a swift, shy kiss to his confused smile and makes sure he’s watching her when she suddenly pushes off from the ladder into a graceful dive. "Ya!" she hears when she resurfaces, already half a length ahead of him by the time he dives in after her. 


End file.
